BETWEEN THE LINES

Why homosexuals can never 'marry'

Joseph Farah is founder, editor and chief executive officer of WND. He is the author or co-author of 13 books that have sold more than 5 million copies, including his latest, "The Restitution of All Things: Israel, Christians, and the End of the Age." Before launching WND as the first independent online news outlet in 1997, he served as editor in chief of major market dailies including the legendary Sacramento Union.

We’re living in times when some of the most basic concepts and assumptions of Western civilization need to be repeated.

With well-heeled homosexual activists effectively penetrating both major political parties and undermining what remains of our Judeo-Christian assumptions about marriage, it’s time for a refresher course, a return to basic legal and moral precepts.

Same-sex marriage is an oxymoron. “Marriage” is and shall always remain an institution between one man and one woman. No civilization or culture in the history of the world has ever experimented with same-sex marriage, though there were questionable experiments with polygamy, always fraught with severe and negative consequences. Bible-believing Jews and Christians consider marriage a divinely created institution that goes all the way back to the Garden of Eden. This account was confirmed by Jesus in the gospels when He was asked about divorce. What today’s proponents of same-sex marriage seek to do is redefine marriage, claiming this institution that has long been seen as the literal building block of civilized, productive and self-governing societies is “discriminatory” because it prohibits homosexuals from participating. Nothing could be more absurd.

Legally speaking, though, even in an increasingly secular society like ours, there is a reason same-sex marriages could never be recognized. A marriage that is not consummated has long been considered incomplete, not deserving of any legal recognition whatsoever. A marriage union that remains unconsummated never happened in the eyes of the law. So please tell me how a same-sex couple consummates one of these make-believe marriages? Acts of sodomy were never considered consummation in the eyes of the law. Again, this suggests that whatever it is the homosexual activists are trying to achieve through their relentless campaign, it is not marriage. It would have to be some complete and utter corruption of the idea of marriage.

With all the legal wrangling and the heated debates over the proposed redefining of marriage, why haven’t I heard this latter argument made by anyone?

It’s so obvious.

I suggest to you there is a lack of courage among Christians, Jews, conservatives, Republicans and even legal defenders of the family today. From all appearances, despite the tremendous support the traditional definition of marriage has received from voters in all 31 states in which it was contested, and despite the fact that not one prominent politician in America has dared to speak out in favor of a redefinition of marriage, not even Barack Obama, there is a timidity about laying it on the line and taking a hard stand.

Meanwhile, Republicans Laura Bush and Ted Olson are out there on the vanguard of what homosexual activists consider the ultimate coup in the social revolution they are waging – putting themselves firmly on the record in favor of same-sex marriage. Now we have conservative attorney Ann Coulter, one of the conservative movements darlings, headlining an event called “Homocon,” sponsored by a group called GOProud that is taking the same-sex marriage fight deep into Republican and conservative turf. This group was already confirmed as a conservative organization in good standing by the organizers of the Conservative Political Action Conference. Conservative icon Glenn Beck, for all his “God and country” talk, has made it clear he sees no harm in same-sex marriage.

Meanwhile, no one prominent in public life, besides yours truly, has taken a hard-line stand against all this double-talk and compromising.

It’s time to lay it on the line with some plain talk: Two men cannot marry each other because they cannot consummate that union. Period. End of story. Two women cannot marry each other because they cannot consummate that union. Period. End of story.